Today our fatigue feels chronic; our anxieties, amplified. Proliferating technologies command our attention. Many people complain of burnout, and economic instability and the threat of ecological catastrophe fill us with dread. We look to the past, imagining life to have once been simpler and slower, but extreme mental and physical stress is not a modern syndrome. Beginning in classical antiquity, this book demonstrates how exhaustion has always been with us and helps us evaluate more critically the narratives we tell ourselves about the phenomenon. Medical, cultural, literary, and biographical sources have cast exhaustion as a biochemical imbalance, a somatic ailment, a viral disease, and a spiritual failing. It has been linked to loss, the alignment of the planets, a perverse desire for death, and social and economic disruption. Pathologized, demonized, sexualized, and even weaponized, exhaustion unites the mind with the body and society in such a way that we attach larger questions of agency, willpower, and well-being to its symptoms. Mapping these political, ideological, and creative currents across centuries of human development, Exhaustion finds in our struggle to overcome weariness a more significant effort to master ourselves.Less

Exhaustion : A History

Anna Katharina Schaffner

Published in print: 2016-06-07

Today our fatigue feels chronic; our anxieties, amplified. Proliferating technologies command our attention. Many people complain of burnout, and economic instability and the threat of ecological catastrophe fill us with dread. We look to the past, imagining life to have once been simpler and slower, but extreme mental and physical stress is not a modern syndrome. Beginning in classical antiquity, this book demonstrates how exhaustion has always been with us and helps us evaluate more critically the narratives we tell ourselves about the phenomenon. Medical, cultural, literary, and biographical sources have cast exhaustion as a biochemical imbalance, a somatic ailment, a viral disease, and a spiritual failing. It has been linked to loss, the alignment of the planets, a perverse desire for death, and social and economic disruption. Pathologized, demonized, sexualized, and even weaponized, exhaustion unites the mind with the body and society in such a way that we attach larger questions of agency, willpower, and well-being to its symptoms. Mapping these political, ideological, and creative currents across centuries of human development, Exhaustion finds in our struggle to overcome weariness a more significant effort to master ourselves.

Joan Waugh’s essay examines the arc of General Francis Channing Barlow’s Civil War, from enlistment as a private in April 1861 through his promotion to major general in 1865. She argues that he can ...
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Joan Waugh’s essay examines the arc of General Francis Channing Barlow’s Civil War, from enlistment as a private in April 1861 through his promotion to major general in 1865. She argues that he can be understood through the prism of his background—a Republican born in New York, reared in Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard. Cynical, pessimistic, and often critical of his commanders, Barlow sometimes doubted Union victory though he devoted himself completely to the cause, suffering two potentially career-ending wounds. By the summer of 1864, when he commanded a division in General Winfield Scott Hancock’s Union Second Corps, both mental and physical fatigue had taken their toll, leaving Barlow at his lowest point as the Army of the Potomac settled in for the siege of Petersburg.Less

Francis Channing Barlow’s Civil War

Joan Waugh

Published in print: 2015-09-25

Joan Waugh’s essay examines the arc of General Francis Channing Barlow’s Civil War, from enlistment as a private in April 1861 through his promotion to major general in 1865. She argues that he can be understood through the prism of his background—a Republican born in New York, reared in Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard. Cynical, pessimistic, and often critical of his commanders, Barlow sometimes doubted Union victory though he devoted himself completely to the cause, suffering two potentially career-ending wounds. By the summer of 1864, when he commanded a division in General Winfield Scott Hancock’s Union Second Corps, both mental and physical fatigue had taken their toll, leaving Barlow at his lowest point as the Army of the Potomac settled in for the siege of Petersburg.

The concluding chapter situates local marriage immigrants within Korea’s immigrant communities across the country. It also discusses recent developments of “multicultural fatigue” and its ...
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The concluding chapter situates local marriage immigrants within Korea’s immigrant communities across the country. It also discusses recent developments of “multicultural fatigue” and its implications and the new policies related to marriage immigrants and international marriages.Less

Afterword

Minjeong Kim

Published in print: 2018-04-30

The concluding chapter situates local marriage immigrants within Korea’s immigrant communities across the country. It also discusses recent developments of “multicultural fatigue” and its implications and the new policies related to marriage immigrants and international marriages.

This chapter explores the function of sleep habits and insomnia in Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End and Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, arguing that insomnia is an embodiment of the ...
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This chapter explores the function of sleep habits and insomnia in Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End and Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, arguing that insomnia is an embodiment of the individual's resistance to military discipline, loss of privacy, and the subjection of one's body to authoritative control. Insomnia, a liminal state between sleeping and waking, pits the body against the mind or mind against the body, and in doing so illustrates the failure of disciplinary mechanisms to completely regulate individual behaviours. Further, the phenomenology of insomnia is in many ways similar to the phenomenology of experience in the First World War, especially given the war's association with exhaustion and fatigue, nocturnal activity, a sense of endlessness, and idiosyncratic temporality, making it an apt device through which to express the anxieties associated with participation in the war.Less

The Work of Sleep : Insomnia and Discipline in Ford and Sassoon

Sarah Kingston

Published in print: 2015-07-01

This chapter explores the function of sleep habits and insomnia in Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End and Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, arguing that insomnia is an embodiment of the individual's resistance to military discipline, loss of privacy, and the subjection of one's body to authoritative control. Insomnia, a liminal state between sleeping and waking, pits the body against the mind or mind against the body, and in doing so illustrates the failure of disciplinary mechanisms to completely regulate individual behaviours. Further, the phenomenology of insomnia is in many ways similar to the phenomenology of experience in the First World War, especially given the war's association with exhaustion and fatigue, nocturnal activity, a sense of endlessness, and idiosyncratic temporality, making it an apt device through which to express the anxieties associated with participation in the war.

In Chapter 2, I address the entrenched powers in a community or organization that erect obstacles to enduring change and their relationship to the second, and in many ways, most critical strategy for ...
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In Chapter 2, I address the entrenched powers in a community or organization that erect obstacles to enduring change and their relationship to the second, and in many ways, most critical strategy for social change: identifying the power base—who holds the power and who the critical stakeholders may be. In this chapter, we will show that this power is not surmountable and can be confronted. However, it takes time, patience, and perseverance. I chronicle a 20-year effort to convince the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change their perceptions of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, an ailment I experienced personally, and learned first-hand how harmful misperceptions and bureaucratic inaction can be. Certainly, we expect our efforts to be met with resistance in some form of another. For this reason, any agent for change attempting to reform a system must be armed with a keen knowledge of that system, as well as an awareness of all of the principle players and environments involved.Less

Challenging the Status Quo

Leonard A. Jason

Published in print: 2013-01-21

In Chapter 2, I address the entrenched powers in a community or organization that erect obstacles to enduring change and their relationship to the second, and in many ways, most critical strategy for social change: identifying the power base—who holds the power and who the critical stakeholders may be. In this chapter, we will show that this power is not surmountable and can be confronted. However, it takes time, patience, and perseverance. I chronicle a 20-year effort to convince the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change their perceptions of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, an ailment I experienced personally, and learned first-hand how harmful misperceptions and bureaucratic inaction can be. Certainly, we expect our efforts to be met with resistance in some form of another. For this reason, any agent for change attempting to reform a system must be armed with a keen knowledge of that system, as well as an awareness of all of the principle players and environments involved.

This chapter will explore the emerging issue of judicial stress, through a review of relevant research, policies, and procedures, and provide recommendations for future research and policy. Existing ...
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This chapter will explore the emerging issue of judicial stress, through a review of relevant research, policies, and procedures, and provide recommendations for future research and policy. Existing research suggests that judges experience stress from safety concerns, secondary traumatic stress, and occupational burnout. Gaps in the literature are delineated to identify some specific areas of focus for future researchers. Interventions designed to prevent and/or assuage judge stress are also outlined and ideas for future research are proposed to fill specific gaps in the literature. Finally, recommendations for policy and practice are provided, based on logic, anecdotes, and research findings. The dearth of recommendations based on empirical findings underscores the need for further research on the topic.Less

Judicial Stress: A Topic in Need of Research

Jared ChamberlainJames T. Richardson

Published in print: 2012-12-28

This chapter will explore the emerging issue of judicial stress, through a review of relevant research, policies, and procedures, and provide recommendations for future research and policy. Existing research suggests that judges experience stress from safety concerns, secondary traumatic stress, and occupational burnout. Gaps in the literature are delineated to identify some specific areas of focus for future researchers. Interventions designed to prevent and/or assuage judge stress are also outlined and ideas for future research are proposed to fill specific gaps in the literature. Finally, recommendations for policy and practice are provided, based on logic, anecdotes, and research findings. The dearth of recommendations based on empirical findings underscores the need for further research on the topic.

This chapter addresses the early experimental and theoretical works of Jean Epstein (1897-1953) who later became an influential silent era filmmaker. In Today's Poetry, a New Mindset (1921), Bonjour ...
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This chapter addresses the early experimental and theoretical works of Jean Epstein (1897-1953) who later became an influential silent era filmmaker. In Today's Poetry, a New Mindset (1921), Bonjour cinéma (1922) and Lyrosophy (1922), as well as essays published in the international avant-garde journal L’Esprit nouveau in 1921, Epstein articulated a theory of modernist literature as fundamentally permeated by the cinema. Modernism, he argues, responded to the same psycho-physiological condition as pulp novels and serial films: perceptual fatigue and sensorial blockages (coenesthesis). French modernist poets and American filmmakers, he added, deployed their new esthetics in parallel, and he called for the ‘superposition’ of poetry and cinema. The theory he limns out, based of embodiment and mass culture, precedes and perhaps influenced a similar approach by Walter Benjamin, who likely read his work. Already in 1921, Epstein had recuperated Guillaume Apollinaire's coinage, ‘surréalisme,’ to denote this new cinepoetics of the postwar. This detailed and remarkably original theory of modernist poetry as refracting specific features of film esthetics has yet to be integrated into the contemporary canon of poetry criticism.Less

Jean Epstein's Invention of Cinepoetry

Christophe Wall-Romana

Published in print: 2012-11-01

This chapter addresses the early experimental and theoretical works of Jean Epstein (1897-1953) who later became an influential silent era filmmaker. In Today's Poetry, a New Mindset (1921), Bonjour cinéma (1922) and Lyrosophy (1922), as well as essays published in the international avant-garde journal L’Esprit nouveau in 1921, Epstein articulated a theory of modernist literature as fundamentally permeated by the cinema. Modernism, he argues, responded to the same psycho-physiological condition as pulp novels and serial films: perceptual fatigue and sensorial blockages (coenesthesis). French modernist poets and American filmmakers, he added, deployed their new esthetics in parallel, and he called for the ‘superposition’ of poetry and cinema. The theory he limns out, based of embodiment and mass culture, precedes and perhaps influenced a similar approach by Walter Benjamin, who likely read his work. Already in 1921, Epstein had recuperated Guillaume Apollinaire's coinage, ‘surréalisme,’ to denote this new cinepoetics of the postwar. This detailed and remarkably original theory of modernist poetry as refracting specific features of film esthetics has yet to be integrated into the contemporary canon of poetry criticism.

This chapter offers a reading of the magnificent “conversation” that opens The Infinite Conversation, focusing on its interrupted character while following a movement that is comparable to a “being ...
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This chapter offers a reading of the magnificent “conversation” that opens The Infinite Conversation, focusing on its interrupted character while following a movement that is comparable to a “being underway to language.” It contains a lengthy discussion of Blanchot's engagement with the thought and speech of Georges Bataille.Less

A Simple Change in the Play of Words: The Infinite Conversation

Christopher Fynsk

Published in print: 2013-06-13

This chapter offers a reading of the magnificent “conversation” that opens The Infinite Conversation, focusing on its interrupted character while following a movement that is comparable to a “being underway to language.” It contains a lengthy discussion of Blanchot's engagement with the thought and speech of Georges Bataille.